Un Conte Cruel

by Paulus the Woodgnome

The King (may he live for ever !) cannot sleep. His Majesty is laid every
night upon sheets of silk under hangings dyed the colour of the midnight sky and
sewn with gold and seed pearls, but he cannot sleep. The word has gone all through
the Court, from the high officials to the lesser, and of course the servants (who
know everything first) have spread the news beyond the hidden gardens and the
jade-tiled walls of the palace into the town and the surrounding countryside.
The King cannot sleep, for light-fingered, light-hearted Zethel, son of Zithiriel
the demiwitch, has stolen away from the palace and stolen the rest from His
Majesty's soul.

Now the King's temper, always a little high, has grown more unreliable than
ever for want of sleep; only a certain aristocratic ennui has prevented him
from having all the Court officials boiled in honey, or starting a small war as a
distraction. The Court Physicians have all been dismissed, without a pension, for
the failure of their syrups and linctuses: not drowsy poppy, nor spiky Cretan
lettuce, nor valeriana that nods red in the rocky gardens of the West can
bring Sleep's dark wing to the royal bedchamber.

If it were only the physicians, mind you, there would be little to trouble anyone,
but all the rest of the court has suffered. Most especially, handsome youths, of
whatever station (normally such a feature and an adornment of the Court), have had
a hard time of it, and those in particular whose misfortune it is to have long
dark hair, sparkling grey eyes and lithe tanned bodies (as, many recall, did the
never-to-be-sufficiently-maledicted Zethel) are liable to provoke a storm upon
entering the Presence. A new fashion has grown up, for cropped blonde hair and muscles.

Today it is the turn of the wizards. They have come and gone, dismissed with
harsh words and without success. Until, at the very end of the queue of petitioners
comes a mountebank dressed in the style of the East, very shabby, a small sorceror
such as make their living among the souks and the caravanserais with
illusion and clever patter and the small magics of finding and hiding. And he
speaks at length to the First Minister, whose countenance has grown near as haggard
as his master's, and shows him a document, and for the first time since the
beautiful and unreliable offspring of the demiwitch quit the palace the First
Minister is seen to smile.

Then the First Minister with his own hands has taken a document and written
upon it that he requires all who are presented with it to give aid to the bearer
in the King's name, and sealed it with the Lesser Seal, which is the seal used
for all official business less terrible than successions, marriages, and capitulations.
Thus armed the mountebank in turn has busied himself among the carpenters and
device makers and silversmiths and makers of musical intruments, requisitioning
aid and supplies with equal liberality. And in truth, the various artisans and
craftsmen have been glad enough to lend their aid, for when the Court sneezes, it
is said, honest working folk catch cold, and commissions and payments have been
scarce enough in this uncertain time. Finally, this ragged outsider, this stranger,
this uncertain and unreliable saviour, has gone through the ranks of the army and
the rabble of the town, through the souks of the merchants and the silken
hangings of the court, searching for those young men with the bravery and the
talents and the will to serve their country.

In a disused courtyard of the palace a large awning has been erected to hide
the work from the eyes of the curious and the rays of the sun. The workmen work
with hammers padded with wool, that the noise of hammering may not disturb His
Majesty and cause him to enquire about this most secret project. Other noises
have come of late, strange caterwaulings and cries, hastily muffled. At last, it
seems the work is done. The courtyard stands empty again, dreaming in the sunlight,
and the lizards return to claim it for their own.

And that night, as the King (may he live for ever !) prepares wearily for
another night of tossing and turning he sees, as his gentlemen of the bedchamber
escort him to the high divan dressed with silk, that a hanging, a veil as fine
and grey as mist, lies across the far end of the chamber where his musicians (now
dismissed and working in taverns for a poorer but more appreciative audience) were
wont to sit.

His brow grows thunderous.

"What is the meaning of this ?" he asks, with a sullen restraint
that bodes ill for the author of such an unauthorised change in the royal decor.

"Your Majesty," says the First Minister, appearing as if by magic,
"this is my doing. But I pray you before you dismiss me, who has served you
and your father before you faithfully these 47 years, that you will hear me out,
whom I love like a son as well as a monarch."

The King thinks that this is certainly insolence and possibly
lese-majeste, and is just about to open his mouth to enquire
the statutory penalty for the latter when the minister claps his hands, the veil
falls, and the King gasps and then falls silent.

"Your Majesty," says the little sorceror, seated at the keyboard,
"I present a music that I trust will be to your taste."

For at last revealed, the design, so roughly sketched out on his diagrams and
made solid, workable, and beautiful by the craftsmen of the court, is a musical
intrument. An organ, perhaps one might deem it, of a most refined and unusual
kind. So refined and unusual, indeed that it might very well catch the aesthetic
attention even of such a subtle monarch as our own.

The keyboard is of ivory and rosewood, and the inlays are of sandal and electrum,
and the carving - the carving is exquisite, and detailed and quite unusual in
content, since it depicts scenes of flagellation and punishment with the nicest
precision and clarity of line. But the best part, ah by far the most interesting
part, judging by His Majesty's transfixed gaze, is the music-making mechanism
itself as it rises up above the instrumentalist.

Affixed to twelve wooden supports are twelve young men. All are naked, and
lithe, with sunkissed golden skin and long dark hair. Twelve mirrors of polished
silver, carefully positioned, permit one to see their faces, which would otherwise
be hidden since each is bound face down by chains of steel. The padded wood
beneath them is shaped and curved so that the most prominent part of each is the
buttocks. Each young man is regular of feature, and grey of eye. They are arranged
by order of height, from a slim, short youth who seems scarcely more than a boy,
to a strapping young soldier well above two yards in height and with shoulders
to match. And poised above the buttocks of each is a wheel bearing an array of
short leather straps.

The shabby stranger turns to his keyboard and begins to play. As each key is
depressed the rotating wheel lowers, delivering a stream of sharp blows to the
helpless buttocks pinioned below it. And the boy yells. High and low they yell,
making a curious, but not unpleasant music. Not unpleasant, at least, it seems
to the king. For His Majesty seems quite entranced by the spectacle. After a brief
rendition, the mountebank rises and bows again.

"Your Majesty's skill at all the arts is well known. Would the King's
Majesty care to try this unworthy instrument ?"

As if in a dream the King, who has still spoken no word, walks down to the
keyboard vacated by the bowing sorceror and seats himself at the console. He looks
up at the twelve naked bodies, the buttocks glowing a pretty red from the first
tune, and for the first time in a week he smiles.

"We think We might play something . . ." he pauses,
"quite long." The youths above him stiffen in their bonds, but there is
nothing they can do. The buttocks twitch and strain as they grow first vermilion, then
crimson, then rose madder and royal purple, but they cannot escape, no, not by the
width of an iota can they escape the cruel leather that stripes the tender flesh.

The king finds the recital quite energising, particularly once the intricacies
of the foot pedals are explained: "This for louder, Majesty, as it speeds
the wheel, and this for softer, which slows it." His third effort, an attempt
at the second movement of Lurazio's "Little Concerto in D" is particularly
good even if it is interrupted while his Majesty recovers his breath from laughing
so much. But no-one is too concerned - it is a pleasure for all who love him
(as of course all his subjects do) to see the monarch restored to such good humour.

Standing up at last from the keyboard with a last basso yelp from the
strapping (not to say strapped) youth at the end, the King clasps his First
Minister to him and kisses him.

"Dearest of servants," he says, "what should I do without your
wisdom ?" and he grants the First Minister the dukedoms of Evanesce
and Parity on the spot. The mountebank too, is rewarded, with generous amounts of
gold and the usual blinding to prevent any further such instruments being made
(a hazard of the trade of which the First Minister inexplicably failed to warn
him). And while the King retires to his bed with a small snack of capons, fruit,
cheese and three types of wine, together with an extremely pretty and extremely
blond boy with whom he will make energetic love before sleeping soundly the clock
around, the organ is quietly wheeled to a place of honour in the Hall of Devices,
while the music-making parts of it are taken - lying on their stomachs -
to the Royal Infirmary, where the attendants will anoint their purple and swollen
buttocks with soothing unguents, cognizant of the sacrifices these young men have made
for King and Country.